City’s Pool Plan Meets Resistance

At City Hall on Monday, a proposal was floated to close two of Regina’s five outdoor swimming pools. The official city line is that all five — Dewdney, Maple Leaf, Wascana, Regent and Massey — are at a point in their lifecycle where they’re in need of substantial repairs. Closing two would reduce the capital burden, and save on operating costs. The city says some of the savings will be used for a $12 million upgrade to Wascana Pool that would include popular features like spray pads.

The CBC report said outdoor tennis courts would also be looked at with the goal of closing some and upgrading others.

Reginans are already starting to register their discontent with the city’s plan. One of the pools on the chopping block is Maple Leaf, and a Save Maple Leaf Pool Facebook page has been established. Questions are also being raised about the city’s spending priorities in pushing a $278 million sports stadium while cutting back on desperately needed services for everyday Reginans to help them keep fit, active and engaged with their community.

With the above photo, by the way, I’m not sure which pool it is, but I lifted it from the city website.

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Author: Gregory Beatty

Greg Beatty is a crime-fighting shapeshifter who hatched from a mutagenic egg many decades ago. He likes sunny days, puppies and antique shoes. His favourite colour is not visible to your puny human eyes. He refuses to write a bio for this website and if that means Whitworth writes one for him, so be it.
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5 thoughts on “City’s Pool Plan Meets Resistance”

I simply do not understand why the City thinks that a Spray Pad can replace a swimming pool!! Swimming pools are not just to play in, people actually swim in them, and many of us swim many km per day in an outdoor pool. Swimming is healthy, it uses the entire body, it is a great exercise which keeps health care costs down, this should be seen as a public good!

The pool pictured is Massey, in Hillsdale next to Campbell Collegiate. 1. It’s disgraceful that both of the pools being considered for landfill are in low-income neighbourhoods. 2. It’s disgraceful at all that we have an admin that wants to close a couple of itty bitty little pools used by hoards of kids in summer time, but feel the need to ply several hundreds of millions into a stadium.

City priorities: Corporate over community.

It’s funny that people who care about kids and fitness will be likely be dismissed as having “an agenda” in reasoning to keep pools open, while the men foisting a multi-hundred-million dollar stadium project down your throats will be celebrated as doing *the peoples’ work*.

I’d MUCH rather pay a couple of dollars more per year to save/fix/replace pools than many more dollars a year to fund a stadium boondoggle.